After a weekend of visiting with old friends, a trip to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and ripping out the bushes in front of my house to make way for new plants, I was feeling a bit behind in homework. I managed to pull it all together in time for class this morning though. One of the first things Dr. A mentioned in his lecture was a test he would be giving today that would count for 50% of our grade. Before anyone began hyperventilating, he grinned and let us know it was his idea of a joke. I have done this to my own students before. It's good to keep a sense of humor as both a teacher and student.
We didn't get as much time to paint today and spent more time discussing our latest class reading, Kathleen Walsh-Piper's Image to Word. My table realized as we talked how important it is to make meaning out of the things we see. The act of writing and the act of viewing art or anything require you to slow down and ponder. Ponder does not get used much in our cultural vocabulary anymore. I am not calling for our entire life to slow down, but I think it is really valuable to carve out time to understand yourself through something like writing or painting.
Which means enough reflection, and time for me to create.